Oddbean new post about | logout
 No, I never just follow accounts blindly. This is what many recommend but I actually recommend against it. 
I always read every note and reply they’ve made for the past 1-2 weeks before following. If I like them enough, only then do I follow. Your criteria are up to you, but that’s what I do. 
 I like the low time preference approach. That works too, as long as you’re not impatient. 
 lol I actually have a backlog of people to look into. 
 I used to keep a text file of people’s npubs before clients had searchable tags so I could find my friends more quickly. 😂 
 If I’d done that I wouldn’t have lost 200 ish of my follows 😢 
 Try this: https://metadata.nostr.com 
 Yeah, because this happened to me I asked a question in this note and got a lot of good tips. 

nostr:note10rmngg3gr53x2n7alrvhtlxjn4evpkrwhy3rvq4wvjekcv4zxz6qpetm5t 
 Haha still have a note with just that 
 Cool, this is how I do Twitter. I only follow people once I know I'm interested in hearing what they're gonna say

But I guess that kinda doesn't work on here when you're first starting out, since there's no algorithm to suggest other people you're not following that you might be interested in following. 
 So the true thing people say is “we are the algorithm” — you’ll run into people posting about interests you have (via hashtags) and people who those you follow are interacting with, either through conversation or through reposting their stuff. 

I’ve never had Twitter but I think this way is good enough for me. The experiences I’ve personally had with algorithms elsewhere have led me not to trust them to actually account for my real desires of what I want to spend time on.  YMMV! 
 Interesting. I usually have good experiences with algorithms, at least Twitter's and YouTube's. I guess I'm just that kind of personality. 
 My experience with the algos was that I kept getting served worse and worse content, to the point where I could only assume it was intentionally designed to make people feel anger and start conflicts.

Under the new regime it seems to have been engineered to recommend some of the most insane toxic accounts by default even if you had just set up an private account with only a few followers just to post the funny things your kids say. 

I had to completely detach from that internet sewer. I also gave up an account I had since 2008 with several thousand followers, but where almost nobody ever noticed or replied to me. 

Going just by “engagement” alone, I’m way up after 2 years on Nostr.